


Ataraxia & Haecceity

by AnonymousHeavyIndustries



Series: Wham, Bam, Thank You WMAM [1]
Category: Free!
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Bear hugs, Breathplay, Flirting, Fluff, Interracial Relationship, Language Barrier, M/M, Masturbation, Size Difference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 07:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15925700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousHeavyIndustries/pseuds/AnonymousHeavyIndustries
Summary: Failure can open unexpected doors.Or; despite the massive cultural and linguistic barriers, that Swedish guy is kind of hot.





	Ataraxia & Haecceity

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back again, not to be the hero this fandom wants, but the one it deserves.

and despite what Makoto said, he didn't mind losing. He'd lost plenty of times throughout his years of swimming. Half the time he raced Rin, Rin came out on top. There was nothing enjoyable about losing, mind, but barring extreme emotional stakes, there was nothing terribly upsetting about it either. Only a vague sense of disappointment, discontent. No, losing in itself wasn't the issue. The fact that he'd lost by such a monstrous margin was what shook him. Failures came in tenths of seconds, not tens.

When that foreigner hit the wall long before he breached the three-quarter mark—despite him swimming his hardest, harder even than when he swam against Rin, with Rin it was always at least _close_ —the full understanding of what Rin had gone through overseas crushed down on him with the weight of the universe. In his blindness to pro-level competition, he had yet to realize that in those eighteen years of alleged genius, talent, extraordinariness, he'd only been a very big fish turning laps in a pond that was in truth, a puddle.

This was what it meant to be ordinary. To do your best and not even begin to compare.

When he discovered that the foreigner he'd enjoyed lunch with was the world record holder, he simply thought, _Well that makes sense,_ and congratulated him on his victory.

(For all the faults ascribed to him by others, poor sportsmanship was absent.)

—

It turned out the Swedes would be staying in Japan for a while.

—

Their world opened into one of halting, conversational Japanese. Languages, Al said, came easier after the second. You learned to pick apart the underlying framework native speakers took for granted. You could compare, contrast the nuances of verb conjugation or question archaic linguistic features or wonder what made a noun feminine or masculine. He flipped between watashi, ore, boku, flirted with atashi and watakushi for a while, then settled into a casual feminine dialect that gave pause to unsuspecting civilians. They looked at his blond hair and great stature and wrote it off as poor foreign instruction, as per usual.

One of his well meaning, linguistically savvy teammates attempted to intervene. The argument was fast and in Swedish, leaving Haru to admire the cheery yellow paintjob on the restaurant's wall as he waited for their drinks to arrive. From a couple booths behind him, he could hear the pair of middle school girls sharing a parfait giggling about the foreigner who talked like a woman.

"Haru." Al leaned over, his weight solid even from the scant connection between their hips, their shoulders. "He says people think bad things about me if I talk this way. Do you think is bad if I'm—" He fished for the word.

 _"Gay works."_ The teammate, whose name Haru couldn't be bothered to remember, wrote the katakana on a napkin. _"It's a loan word."_

"—gay?"

"No," Haru said, because that was the truth. "Gay— _gay is okay. No problem._ "

_"There you have it. The only Japanese opinion I care about."_

The drinks came. Al folded up his straw wrapper into a crude triangle and flicked it across at his teammate, then started pointing at random kanji he could see through the window and asking Haru to translate. He didn't know why Al chose him over the other guy since he so rarely knew the equivalent English, but he could write it down and the other guy would repeat it to Al in Swedish, then English, leaving them both better informed.

They exhausted their window kanji before the meal had arrived, so Al tried teaching him a bit of Swedish, but the sounds and shapes repulsed his mouth, phonemes he'd never thought to try to pronounce rolled and cracked against his teeth like tiger-eye marbles. He retreated to the verbal simplicity of Japanese and they carried on til the waitress returned with dinner and an apology for the wait.

—

He had no idea there were puzzle shops in Japan until Al wanted to go to one. They found a small one within a short walk from a train station where products were stacked to the ceiling or mounted on black wire shelving. There were jigsaw puzzles ranging from twelve to twelve-hundred pieces featuring anime, classical paintings, wild animals, and landscapes taking up a sizable chunk of one wall; pegboards, sliding tile puzzles, chess sets, and tangrams taking up another; rows and rows of books about sudoku, anagrams, nonograms, word searches, more. The store was tiny, packed to bursting to the point where they either had to go through the aisles single-file or suck in their guts and wriggle past each other and hope they didn't kick anything off the shelves in the process.

On an endcap near the door was a display of Rubik's Cubes and similar mechanical puzzles. Haru picked up a 3x3x3 and turned it in the light. He and Makoto had a few of them as kids, but they never had the patience or interest to finish solving them once they'd started. Al grabbed one neon coloured nightmare 5x5x5 and began twisting, rotating the rows rapidly, head swaying as if keeping time with an internal orchestra. He set it down solved. Haru hadn't timed it, but it couldn't have been more than a minute.

 _"Once you learn how to solve one, they're all the same. The only thing left to do is to solve it faster._ " He added, "I don't think they're very fun."

Al took his time browsing through everything they had to offer, shuffling along an inch at a time, asking about the differences in all the Nikoli books. Only Sudoku had made it overseas, he said, but Haru knew nothing even about that, so he settled for reading the instructions as Al handed them to him until he knew far more rulesets than he ever wanted.

He spotted a Deep Sea Delights (feat. Loosey-kun) Picross book and went for it on instinct, wedging himself between the shelf and Al. He strained, he twisted, but in the end, he was stuck. Al glanced over his shoulder and laughed. He turned and picked Haru up, then leaned back to get just enough clearance to swing him neatly to the other side, right in front of the book. Haru tucked it under his armpit and resolved to never let it go.

They played with assembly and disentanglement puzzles on a small table set up for demonstrations for a while, but Al continued to glance around, searching for something, and Haru gave up on his Chinese rings to follow him deeper into the shop. They found the owner: an elderly man being devoured by the mountainous heaps of merchandise building up behind the sales counter. On the shelves above him sat elaborate, handcrafted puzzle boxes, ranging from small enough to fit in your back pocket to large enough to necessitate two handed-carry. Each had the name of the creator and the region it'd come from on a notecard beside them. Their price tags were tiny, but ridiculous.

The old man tottered to his feet. "Would you like to try one?"

Al grinned like a fool.

—

Al's knee joggled softly against Haru's. Marron, which got a modest headcount on the best of days, was quiet this time of the afternoon. Makoto was gone to work, Kisumi had one of his infinite clubs to attend, Asahi was picking up last-minute ingredients for dinner service, and Ikuya and Hiyori were bumming around with their own swim team, so it was down to him, Rin, and Al. Rin had a thousand million questions about technique, diet, and training schedules that Al shrugged off, suggesting he check out the interviews he'd done about those exact things. Their conversation expired there, Al more interested in having Haru read him a passage from a swimming magazine he'd picked up on the way over.

Haru knew Al could understand at most a third of what he was saying, but it wasn't as if the language barrier had stopped them thus far. Every time Al spoke Swedish, it sounded like the gibberish they used to simulate fantasy languages in anime or the villager-speak from Animal Crossing. Haru imagined him as a big cat with half-lidded eyes and a whorl of hair that covered most of his face. It was exactly the kind of character he'd keep in his village.

He poured over pages of new training techniques, letters to the editor, specialist articles, and advertisements as Rin, unused to being anything but the centre of attention when he was with Haru, fumed over his coffee and hummed and hawed at his phone. He didn't know what Rin expected. They'd been stopped by other members of the swimming community and asked those exact same questions dozens of times and while Al had answered a couple at the beginning, his patience wore thin, opting to say nothing rather than be rude. He understood. He got the same way.

Al draped an arm around Haru's shoulder, pulling him closer. He'd been doing that more often lately. He assumed it was as a sign of their friendship, as Rin and Nagisa's impromptu embraces were. Haru tucked his arm in and brought the magazine along, nestling against his chest without breaking stride in his sentence. Bewilderment flashed over Rin's face and he fumbled his phone, almost dropping it into the saucy remnants of his spaghetti.

Al addressed Rin, asking something in English too quick for Haru to catch it.

"Wow. That's—wow." Rin rubbed the back of his neck. "He, ah... He wanted me to tell you that he really likes your voice. He thinks it's soothing."

"Thank you." Haru turned the page and scanned for something worth reading. The reviews of the latest batch of goggles looked promising.

"He also says you have..." His ears were going red. "Beautiful eyes."

"Thank you."

"He also says— _No, you can tell him that yourself!_ " Rin shoved his chair back and hastily gathered his belongings. "I just remembered I have a meeting to go to. Haru, call me tonight. We have things to discuss."

Rin dropped his payment and vamoosed from the premises. Al checked the time on his own phone and said he too had to leave. Haru stacked their dishes and sketched cat Al holding fresh mackerel on his napkin. Asahi's sister came around to check in.

"More tea?"

He held up his cup, grateful.

—

"Which do you prefer: Japanese guys or white guys?"

No matter which way he answered, there was no winning. If nothing else, it was better than the expected, _Are you and the world champ banging?_

"This afternoon made me think about it. It's hard to pick, right? Cause I love Japan, I was born and raised here, but there's something about foreign guys that's," Rin trailed off, covered the mouthpiece and spoke to whoever had intruded. It gave Haru time to fortify his mental facilities. "I mean, it's not a clear victory. White guys have this smell to them. I don't know how to describe it. It's not bad, it's... weird. I stop noticing it after I've been around them for a while, but every time I go back to Australia after I've been home it's like, what _is_ that? I still think I like white guys more though. Just a little. You?"

"It's not something I've ever thought about."

"Albert hasn't changed your mind? Still a Japanese national through and through?"

"I don't see the point of this."

"If you're keeping it on the down low from the others, that's cool. I won't say anything if you don't want me to."

"Your imagination's getting away from you."

"The things he said, Haru! You heard them!"

"He was being nice. They probably say that all the time in Sweden."

"I don't care where you live, normal people don't hang all over guys they barely know and tell them they've got beautiful eyes and a wonderful voice."

"You do that."

"I don't. I mean, I hang on you now and again, but that's cause we're friends. Even I wouldn't say something like that to your face."

"You have beautiful eyes."

Rin sputtered. "Stop it."

"And a wonderful voice."

"Stop, goddammit, you're not derailing this conversation, I need this."

They were out only to their immediate social circles with the understanding that it wasn't to leave that space. Haru was fine with how things were, had no intention to go out of his way to befriend men like him, but Rin craved someone to vent to, to gush about some guy he saw at the gym and how this time, this one really was the hottest guy on the face of the planet (which led Haru to wonder if Australia had an abnormally high concentration of attractive men), and ask stupid, embarrassing questions like if he liked white guys because there wasn't anyone else he could entrust this part of himself with.

"Like I said, it's not something I've thought about. As long as I like somebody, it doesn't matter what he is. Albert and I are friends."

"You don't want him to be the bread to your sandwich? The cream filling to your—"

"Goodnight, Rin."

The next time he saw Al, he tried to get get a whiff of the alleged 'white guy smell' but smelled chlorine and laundry detergent and nothing more.

—

To his surprise, none of the other Swedes accompanied Al to the bath house. He'd figured the trip had been intended as part of the "authentic Japanese experience" that tour guides bragged about, but no, only Al and his bag of toiletries.

As they undressed, it occurred to him that he'd never really looked at Al. He wasn't the type to linger looking at people unless he was drawing them. Instead he recorded a note of the pertinent features—approximate height, physique, eye and hair colour, unusual attributes—and connected with the overall sense of their being. That indistinct air around a person that told you everything you needed to know about them without having to say a word. Call it an aura, if you were into that spiritual business.

Without thinking about it, he found himself dissolving into Al when they were together, their selves mixing and blending into a warm human solution. It was a supreme calm, in ways greater than what he could get from even his best friend. The comfort he got from Makoto stemmed from longevity, tolerance, and acceptance through all odds. With Al, tolerance never had to enter the picture. There was a fundamental understanding.

They sat in front of the taps, filling their buckets. Al overturned his onto himself with a rapturous grin. Haru did the same, albeit with a subtler smile, and decided to take a proper look.

Al stood almost a full head taller than him, taller than Makoto or Sousuke or even Seijuurou. His definition likewise stood in stark contrast, cut as lean as possible without impacting his ability to float, so that even through his paleness, the planes of his musculature were distinct. Other aspects flickered to his attention in bits and pieces. An Adonis belt sharp enough to cut steak. Clean shaven most everywhere but for the dusting of near invisible gold crawling up his stomach. Thick blue veins crisscrossing his forearms. Solid Nordic jawline. Everything glistening wet.

Al brought his hands up and lathered his platinum blond hair until it was lost in a mass of foam that cascaded down the smooth curve of his nape, slithered across his shoulders. Haru's attention drew to that strangely erotic intersection of muscles and joints that composed the upper arm and shoulder where water trailed and squicked and stubble pierced through that subtle darkness in the middle. He'd never wanted to lick a man's armpit before, but he sure did now. Al hummed as he scrubbed, rivulets of soap cresting down his muscles. His legs were spread unabashedly wide, the towel an afterthought draped over one thigh. The stool squeaked under his ass as he shifted in place.

The air was thick, wet, hot. It clung in Haru's throat like taffy. He sat there unbreathing, as though invisible hands had reached into his chest and squeezed his lungs dry. He wanted to melt against him, be the water licking his skin, curl up in his bellybutton til it overflowed and rolled down to his slumbering cock, linger there as long as he could, then succumb to fate and smite himself against the tile. He wanted to be the washed off scum beneath his feet, sucking desperately at his soles as he walked away.

The splash of water on flesh startled him out of his trance. Al set down his bucket and got busy washing the rest of him. He leaned into his own touch, humming and sighing as if he'd been working in a coal mine the past month and was getting clean for the first time since. He abused soap like he had a lifetime supply, heaping up suds so high you could hardly see the man beneath. Soap squelched thickly in his armpits, bubbles fell in fat wet clumps around him, and Haru mechanically washed himself, unable to divert his gaze to more mundane, appropriate sights. His hands hungered to draw Al, preserve him as he was here and now, suds and all.

Al's hands delved between his thighs, leisurely pulling and twisting his cock, working around his balls. The humming turned to moans bit into his inner lip. In the midst of the billowing white clumps, his cock awakened, expanding, stretching to its full length, piercing the air. His hands slid further into places Haru couldn't see. Rin barged into his head unbidden, reminding him, _If you get a white guy before I do, tell me what it's like._

 _"You're staring."_ Al let his leg slide out, exposing himself more fully.

Haru didn't even bother to pretend he'd been doing anything else.

Al offered him his sponge, gesturing towards his back. Haru got up, fixing the towel around his waist though it did nothing to mask his own arousal, and crouched behind him. He pressed the sponge to his skin and Al shivered, wriggling his shoulderblades. He did his best to be thorough, lavishing extra attention on tense areas. Al dropped his head to the side to open up more scrubbing space, hand working his cock in erratic strokes, trying to stay cool as his self-control faltered. Haru pressed his mouth to Al's neck, tasting sweet, soapy flesh. His teeth grazed skin, drawing goosebumps in their wake.

He hooked his arms under Al's and squeezed the strong thickness of his chest, taking in the sheer breadth of him, then backed away, and ran his fingertips down the hard ridges of his spine. He slid a couple fingers into the narrow crack between his cheeks. Thin, downy hair and a puckered ring. His cock twitched, seized with the animal urge to penetrate and fuck them both into a stupor. He sat on his heels, entranced by the contrast of his ruddy mast against Al's ghost pale ass, cockhole gaping, yawning long threads of pre onto the floor. He was so _white_ , the kind he'd only seen on porcelain dolls. He squeezed another bead of pre out of his swollen head and tried to focus. He palpated Al's asshole gently, listening to him babble in a fragmented trilingual mess, breath shuddering and hitching until he forced it down, froze, exhaling hard through his nose.

"Haruka," Al said, cock dripping soap and pre in equal measures. His hands now clutched his knees, nails digging hard semicircles into his skin. He spoke roughly in Swedish, muttered _no no_ and tried to correct himself and again it came out in the wrong language and he gritted his teeth and gesticulated and even his attempts at English became accented and garbled beyond comprehension. He jabbed his finger at Haru's stool. Haru sat down and picked a tile in the wall to watch.

There was little pretense of washing. Al yanked Haru back against him, pressing him into his vacuum-sealed abdominals and eager cock. The difference in their sizes became blatant, his arms engulfing the whole of him with ample room to spare. He haphazardly scrubbed Haru's stomach until he gave up and spun the stool around. He tugged Haru to his feet and hoisted him around the middle the way he had in the game store. There was a solid half foot of air between the soles of Haru's feet and the ground. Al brought them chest to chest, hand clasped over wrist in the small of Haru's back. Haru rested his arms over Al's shoulder to alleviate some of the weight. Al hoisted him a little higher, smiling.

He drove his fist into Haru's back and the air exploded out of him, wrung dry by the ruthless crush between his arms and steely chest. He squeezed, tighter, tighter, _tighter_ til his biceps bulged and his arms shook and Haru was seeing white. His head dropped onto Al's shoulder, gasping for breath that wouldn't come. His feet kicked uselessly at the ground, toes cracking and popping as they stretched to their limits. His nuts lurched hard, cock straining against the deep-carved ridges of Al's abs as he shook and drooled and whimpered into his shoulder, white fading to black as the miliseconds flowed like honey and the riot in his guts rose to a fever pitch. The crush drew one notch tighter. Haru's hips jerked and bucked, smashing his cock against the immobile torso, sack drawing up burning, boiling and he burst, shooting hot white onto his stomach, choking soundlessly as he fired round after round of spunk.

The orgasm subsided as fast as it'd come on and by the time Al set him down, it was over. He swayed on his feet, lightheaded, stupid. Al held him steady and his mind slowly came back to him. The first thing he noticed was Al's sustained erection, but Al didn't seem bothered by it in the slightest.

 _"That was fun."_ He raked his fingers across the cum splatter and slid them into his mouth one at a time, sucking them clean with a filthy _pop_. He repeated himself in Japanese, for practice's sake.

From the changing room, footsteps and chatter. New customers were coming in. Al scooped up his towel and pressed his erection flat to his stomach, cheerfully unruffled. He glanced towards the tubs, thinking, then reconsidered.

"Your apartment is close?"

Haru made a noise of assent that came out deeper, huskier than he intended.

_"Show me."_

—

The puzzle box was one he'd brought with him from Sweden and, if the price tags for the Japanese models were any indication, too valuable to be given casually. Al insisted he keep it, thanking him over and over for everything, before he left him with nothing but the box, a phone number, and a bundle of memories that glowed so bright it hurt to look at them.

Hardwood. Patterned veneer. Barely a seam in view. Mechanisms and secret tracks invisible to his eye came to life under his touch. There was something inside the box, it rattled when shook. He'd played with it a bit the day he'd got it, managing to complete a couple moves before he set it down and powered through the homework he'd fallen behind on. It was there when he woke up. Waiting for him. Challenging him. He knew he couldn't call Al until he'd solved it.

He couldn't finish it in a day. Not two, not three. There were panels to slide and twist, hidden tensions that only became apparent when he moved a piece the wrong way. He didn't know where it was made and he doubted it would've helped any. He called Rei and asked if he knew anything about puzzle boxes, but Rei apologized and said he didn't. Weeks passed. One month. Two. In the hustle of life, he forgot about the box until he returned home and saw it on his nightstand, awaiting his next attempt. He made progress sometimes. Others he worked at it for an hour and got nowhere.

Al hadn't contacted him.

He resented the box. Thought about prying it open with a hammer to see what was inside and give himself peace of mind. Got mad at himself for being stupid. It couldn't be that hard. He put the box inside his sock drawer and focused on swimming. He avoided swim magazines when he could, knowing he'd see Albert Wåhlander printed on one of its pages. His times fluctuated, prompting concerned phone calls and a barrage of dietary advice from Rin.

One evening, he came home and went to his drawers and took out the box and decided either he was going to solve it tonight or he was going to throw it in an incinerator and never think about it again.

He studied the precisely cut slides, thinking of every move he'd made to get this far. Without understanding why, he pressed the box against his ear and tilted it ever so slightly. There was a faint dripping sound. He waited. The dripping ceased. The final lock sprung. The box came open. Inside was

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Haru called him.
> 
> If I owe you comments, I'll get around to them in the near future. More [Tap Down Low](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12821088) SOON. Another thing also SOON. Another another thing SOONish but not as much. The SOONest SOON could go either way for TDL or A(1), I'll have to see which I can finalize quicker. Prepare yourselves.
> 
> Criticism is not only welcome, but encouraged, and helps me create better content in the future. Thanks for reading.  
> 9 September 2018  
> \- 匿名重工業


End file.
